This morning, promptly at 7:15AM, I heard something that I
had not heard in since my first 10 days at Harvard:
“Please move ya caaaah.
If you don’t move ya caaaah, you will be towed. We aahh about to staaht street
cleaning.”
Today is the fourth Thursday of the month. It’s street cleaning day. How fitting is it that the pronouncement that
greeted me back in July is the same one that is ushering me into my final days
at Harvard? Is it a sign? Or is it just a
freak coincidence?
I like to think of it as a sign. Just yesterday at our kick-off meeting to
Commencement Week activities, I mentioned how this is really the beginning of
the end. I mean, it’s also the beginning
of a new life post-Harvard, but it’s the end of the life in which I’ve become
comfortable with the last several months.
In all its craziness, there has been some normalcy.
Every Mon, Tues and several Wednesdays since the beginning
of the year, a group of us would eat at breakfast at the Spangler Cafeteria
right after our Harvard Business School class.
Our impromptu meeting started due to the fact that none of us actually
woke up early enough to eat breakfast before an 8:30AM class. But it was also our way of meeting to review
what happened in the class after each one of us tree-hugging Kennedy School students
got served by the capitalist Business School students. We helped each other decipher the language of
the business school and it became normal. It was something that I kicked off my week,
every week, and now it’s over.
I think about what will become my new normal. Right now, I don’t have a job and no
immediate prospects for a job. As soon
as I leave Harvard, I will lose the structure that I found within the confines
of being a student. The grueling all night writing sessions will be no more. There will be no expectations for my time and I
will be in a state of limbo. I don’t
quite know what I’ll do with myself in the first couple of weeks. As a new bird, which has been kicked out my
mother’s nest, I will spread my wings and attempt to fly.
The incessant chatter of my fellow soon-to-be-evicted birds
will comfort me as I know that the day both hoped for and dreaded is only seven
days away. Some of the birds have bought
extra time by extending their housing leases throughout the summer. Others have
delayed the inevitable by applying and getting accepted to other Harvard master
programs and fellowships. But others,
like me, who have accepted that we will be completely kicked out of the nest,
on May 30, 2013, will look bravely towards commencement and will fortify ourselves with drink.
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| A birdie enjoying a Blue Hawaiian |
